Since we didn't get any class-time to talk about Three Wishes, feel free to post some comments or discussion in response to this posting.
11 comments:
Anonymous
said...
I would like to start a discussion off by just pointing out a few things for argument's sake. The first thing I would like to say is that I really didn't like the book. One being that, although statistics were provided along with the stories, I still found it too vague, like Our Stories Our Songs? I think when the children were being interviewed that they were only being asked specific types of questions to get a point across. The point being that growing up in Israel is devastating. There was a story of a child whose father lived in the United States and all of his kids were in an orphanage in Israel. I found this disturbing because the child would visit his father in the United States and enjoyed it, so why didn’t the father live with all of his kids in United States if they are being given the chance to have a “better” life there? I know my family left Afghanistan for the obvious reason that a war was occurring and Canada is very lineate on immigration. Asides from that, I also found that these children were speaking directly from their emotions rather than stating the facts. It’s more like the Palestinians simply despises the Israeli’s and vice versa so they will say remarks that doesn’t make the other side look too reputable. It’s sad because both children share commonalities but are unable to make the connection with one another.
I think that one of my main problems with the book was that, again, we did not have the questions that were asked to the children. The way a question is phrased can completely change the way that someone answers the question. Another issue I had was that there were two girls in the book that had their mother sitting next to them while Ellis was doing the interview. I found this quite disturbing because most people (not only children) will be careful what they say when they know that another person is listening. And of course the interview was conducted in a McDonald's, the most distracting place for a child to be. So they couldn't have been really concentrated on what Ellis was asking them. I do not think this book represented the children's authentic voice at all. These children held very strong beliefs about the "other" group (either the Palestinians talking about the Israelis or vice versa) and some of them had never even met someone from the opposing side of their beliefs. So the opinions they are expressing such as "I don't know any Israelis. I don't want to know any. They are not the same as me. They only care about killing" (p.85) cannot come from true experiences and the opinions most likely came from parents' influence. Another quite disturbing thing for me was the lack of communication: hate being perpetuated by children who have never even talked to someone on the opposing side of the conflict... I also think that Sadaf's points about the descriptions being too vague is true, Ellis obviously had an agenda while conducting her interviews and used the children's words to back up whatever point she wanted to get across.
amanda wrote: "So the opinions they are expressing...cannot come from true experiences and the opinions most likely came from parents' influence."
I'd like to suggest that Deborah Ellis is actually very conscious of this, and that she wants you to recognize this without her having to point it out. I think this is also why she arranges the book in the way she does - so that she can juxtapose pairs of Israeli and Palestinian children saying very similar (and similarly ignorant) things and allow you to see the commonalities that would be otherwise too politically volatile for her to say herself.
Now whether this is a good strategy in trying to make a point? That's another question altogether.
Actually, I don't think that she only ask specific questions, here is an example she asked the children "what made them happy, afraid, and angry" (this question is in the intro) this is a general question. its not like she ask what is it about the war that makes them angry? then their answer would be based on the war. which would be specific. Any way I think its a good book because it allows other children to see that childhood is a different experience for children all over the world; and at the same time for the children on both side of the "wall" to know that they have more in common than they realize.
2) I disagree, the children's opinion can be their own some of these children have had some experience with the Israeli army and from what they have express the experience was not a positive one. therefore I think it does represent the children's authentic voice, because these children are speaking about their experiences, not someone else's.
To answer Sonia: The way you ask a question can greatly influence the answer you are going to get. I might be wrong, but I think Ellis was looking for very specific answers when she conducted her interviews and would have phrased her questions to reflect what she wanted the children to say. She wanted to make a book about children's thoughts on the conflict in the middle east, if a child talked about his or her fears about failing their math exam that they had the next week, then that would not have been something that Ellis was looking to include in her book. I do agree that the children can have their own opinions about experiences that they have had, but parents do have a great impact on their child's world views and a lot of the hatred stems from ignorance being passed down from generation to generation. To answer Neil's comment: I do realize that Ellis has to be careful of what she includes in her children's books, she may not be published if she has strong political messages throughout the book. But I believe that some people who read Three Wishes will see these stories as representations of the children's true opinions without realizing the outside influences that have helped to form these extreme ideas. So I don't think it is a good strategy because not everyone is taking a University class and learning to think critically about representations of children's voice.
There are a number of things I like about this book. I think it does a good job of showing that children are not politically-neutral and that many do have strong opinions about war, conflict, and "other" people. I don't see it as a problem that these children may be reiterating some of the views of their parents and families. There is no way to prove that the children do not also wholeheartedly believe these things based on the experiences they and others around them have had. How else do we formulate opinions anyway?
Perhaps Ellis's agenda has been to show that children can be active political agents by expressing their opinions about what is going on around them. Of course we don't get a full picture because that would be impossible. I like that she legitimates the stories of each child by giving them credit for their thoughts (i.e. their name, location, picture, etc.). I think if she just wanted to give the reader her own opinions, she would go for a more traditional book format where she would have the freedom to say whatever she wanted.
I agree with Jessica. Ellis does a really good job of trying to get the child's true voice across. There will always be room for criticism when the books that are being published are written, edited and published by adults. In my opinion, Ellis had made an authentic attempt to raise social issues that need attention brought to them. The only criticism I have of Ellis' works is that the endings of her books always tie up nicely. It seems as though various major issues will be occurring and as the books come to an end the stories all have happy endings and work out well. I appreciate the fact that Ellis strives for a realistic baseline in her stories but the endings of her stories appear to be unrealistic. Most of her books all have happy endings. How realistic is that? Maybe I'm just a pessimist.
Melanie I agree with you . You are not a pessimist at all . I felt the same way about all of Ellis' books and I also feel like sometimes she does not give a balanced view of the topics she writes about, her books come across as very onesided. That said, I was also shocked at how very wise and opinionated some of the respondents were and that further made me see that children are neither innocent nor incompetent, especially when it come to issues that affects thier lives.
This book really brought forth some questions about Deborah's other books, at least in my mind. Having lived in Israel, this book struck much closer to home for me than the other books. I cannot say that I can connect intimately with the Palestinian children in this book, because I never really spent too much time in or around those areas of Israel (which definitely says something in itself), but I can connect with the Israeli children. What worries me is that I was in the exact situations of many of these children, my family left the Soviet Union because of the racism to Jews, in Israel I was the one in charge of bringing the gas masks to my parents when the alarms would go off and just last summer I was presented with an army uniform and am M16 while I sat for 2 hours in the army building convincing them that I am a Canadian citizen and that it would be impossible for me to stay in Israel and serve. Now, these experiences may sound foreign and horrible to you guys, but they really weren't. I still feel like Israel is my home and once you're there, the bomb threats really become arbitrary, the 'war' is just a fact of life. At first glance, it can't be a good thing that horrible things like this can seem so normal, but when you live there, they are.
The main point that I want to make is that the kids in this book seem much too devastated. Maybe its just me, maybe its my personal experiences, but life in Israel is normal to the Israele kids that I know that live there. The fact that these kids sound so distraught really makes me question the authenticity of this book as well as all the others. Canada is my home, but so is Israel. What worries me is that the voices in this book sound much too foreign to me.
Extremely true Natalie. Israel is a place where all of my Jewish friends have gone for vacation during the past 8 years. In comparison to the state of Afghanistan, Israel is actually much more different which did make me think about why the children in Israel were being extremely opinionated about how terrible they have it in their country. One can go into a political view and present evidence that suggests otherwise but this isn't a political science class, so on Ellis' behalf, perhaps she was trying to bring out the similarities (fear of one another) between the two different countries and try to make a point that they are similar in their ways of thinking. Funny thing, if you actually take out the heading of where they're from and censor which country they feel uncomfortable with, they are the same child all together that have been raised to criticize one another. Ellis could have very well chosen her questions to reflect this and only this which doesn't make the book very attractive either, and I'm sure there are children who feel very differently in both countries about the situation. Using my friends as a source of evidence, the Israeli children don't seem very credible in the story's unless if Ellis was just probing for that kind of answer.
11 comments:
I would like to start a discussion off by just pointing out a few things for argument's sake. The first thing I would like to say is that I really didn't like the book. One being that, although statistics were provided along with the stories, I still found it too vague, like Our Stories Our Songs? I think when the children were being interviewed that they were only being asked specific types of questions to get a point across. The point being that growing up in Israel is devastating. There was a story of a child whose father lived in the United States and all of his kids were in an orphanage in Israel. I found this disturbing because the child would visit his father in the United States and enjoyed it, so why didn’t the father live with all of his kids in United States if they are being given the chance to have a “better” life there? I know my family left Afghanistan for the obvious reason that a war was occurring and Canada is very lineate on immigration. Asides from that, I also found that these children were speaking directly from their emotions rather than stating the facts. It’s more like the Palestinians simply despises the Israeli’s and vice versa so they will say remarks that doesn’t make the other side look too reputable. It’s sad because both children share commonalities but are unable to make the connection with one another.
I think that one of my main problems with the book was that, again, we did not have the questions that were asked to the children. The way a question is phrased can completely change the way that someone answers the question.
Another issue I had was that there were two girls in the book that had their mother sitting next to them while Ellis was doing the interview. I found this quite disturbing because most people (not only children) will be careful what they say when they know that another person is listening. And of course the interview was conducted in a McDonald's, the most distracting place for a child to be. So they couldn't have been really concentrated on what Ellis was asking them.
I do not think this book represented the children's authentic voice at all. These children held very strong beliefs about the "other" group (either the Palestinians talking about the Israelis or vice versa) and some of them had never even met someone from the opposing side of their beliefs. So the opinions they are expressing such as "I don't know any Israelis. I don't want to know any. They are not the same as me. They only care about killing" (p.85) cannot come from true experiences and the opinions most likely came from parents' influence.
Another quite disturbing thing for me was the lack of communication: hate being perpetuated by children who have never even talked to someone on the opposing side of the conflict...
I also think that Sadaf's points about the descriptions being too vague is true, Ellis obviously had an agenda while conducting her interviews and used the children's words to back up whatever point she wanted to get across.
amanda wrote: "So the opinions they are expressing...cannot come from true experiences and the opinions most likely came from parents' influence."
I'd like to suggest that Deborah Ellis is actually very conscious of this, and that she wants you to recognize this without her having to point it out. I think this is also why she arranges the book in the way she does - so that she can juxtapose pairs of Israeli and Palestinian children saying very similar (and similarly ignorant) things and allow you to see the commonalities that would be otherwise too politically volatile for her to say herself.
Now whether this is a good strategy in trying to make a point? That's another question altogether.
Actually, I don't think that she only ask specific questions, here is an example she asked the children "what made them happy, afraid, and angry" (this question is in the intro) this is a general question. its not like she ask what is it about the war that makes them angry? then their answer would be based on the war. which would be specific. Any way I think its a good book because it allows other children to see that childhood is a different experience for children all over the world; and at the same time for the children on both side of the "wall" to know that they have more in common than they realize.
2) I disagree, the children's opinion can be their own some of these children have had some experience with the Israeli army and from what they have express the experience was not a positive one. therefore I think it does represent the children's authentic voice, because these children are speaking about their experiences, not someone else's.
To answer Sonia: The way you ask a question can greatly influence the answer you are going to get. I might be wrong, but I think Ellis was looking for very specific answers when she conducted her interviews and would have phrased her questions to reflect what she wanted the children to say. She wanted to make a book about children's thoughts on the conflict in the middle east, if a child talked about his or her fears about failing their math exam that they had the next week, then that would not have been something that Ellis was looking to include in her book.
I do agree that the children can have their own opinions about experiences that they have had, but parents do have a great impact on their child's world views and a lot of the hatred stems from ignorance being passed down from generation to generation.
To answer Neil's comment:
I do realize that Ellis has to be careful of what she includes in her children's books, she may not be published if she has strong political messages throughout the book. But I believe that some people who read Three Wishes will see these stories as representations of the children's true opinions without realizing the outside influences that have helped to form these extreme ideas. So I don't think it is a good strategy because not everyone is taking a University class and learning to think critically about representations of children's voice.
There are a number of things I like about this book. I think it does a good job of showing that children are not politically-neutral and that many do have strong opinions about war, conflict, and "other" people. I don't see it as a problem that these children may be reiterating some of the views of their parents and families. There is no way to prove that the children do not also wholeheartedly believe these things based on the experiences they and others around them have had. How else do we formulate opinions anyway?
Perhaps Ellis's agenda has been to show that children can be active political agents by expressing their opinions about what is going on around them. Of course we don't get a full picture because that would be impossible.
I like that she legitimates the stories of each child by giving them credit for their thoughts (i.e. their name, location, picture, etc.). I think if she just wanted to give the reader her own opinions, she would go for a more traditional book format where she would have the freedom to say whatever she wanted.
I agree with Jessica. Ellis does a really good job of trying to get the child's true voice across. There will always be room for criticism when the books that are being published are written, edited and published by adults. In my opinion, Ellis had made an authentic attempt to raise social issues that need attention brought to them. The only criticism I have of Ellis' works is that the endings of her books always tie up nicely. It seems as though various major issues will be occurring and as the books come to an end the stories all have happy endings and work out well. I appreciate the fact that Ellis strives for a realistic baseline in her stories but the endings of her stories appear to be unrealistic. Most of her books all have happy endings. How realistic is that? Maybe I'm just a pessimist.
Melanie I agree with you . You are not a pessimist at all . I felt the same way about all of Ellis' books and I also feel like sometimes she does not give a balanced view of the topics she writes about, her books come across as very onesided.
That said, I was also shocked at how very wise and opinionated some of the respondents were and that further made me see that children are neither innocent nor incompetent, especially when it come to issues that affects thier lives.
This book really brought forth some questions about Deborah's other books, at least in my mind. Having lived in Israel, this book struck much closer to home for me than the other books. I cannot say that I can connect intimately with the Palestinian children in this book, because I never really spent too much time in or around those areas of Israel (which definitely says something in itself), but I can connect with the Israeli children. What worries me is that I was in the exact situations of many of these children, my family left the Soviet Union because of the racism to Jews, in Israel I was the one in charge of bringing the gas masks to my parents when the alarms would go off and just last summer I was presented with an army uniform and am M16 while I sat for 2 hours in the army building convincing them that I am a Canadian citizen and that it would be impossible for me to stay in Israel and serve. Now, these experiences may sound foreign and horrible to you guys, but they really weren't. I still feel like Israel is my home and once you're there, the bomb threats really become arbitrary, the 'war' is just a fact of life. At first glance, it can't be a good thing that horrible things like this can seem so normal, but when you live there, they are.
The main point that I want to make is that the kids in this book seem much too devastated. Maybe its just me, maybe its my personal experiences, but life in Israel is normal to the Israele kids that I know that live there. The fact that these kids sound so distraught really makes me question the authenticity of this book as well as all the others. Canada is my home, but so is Israel. What worries me is that the voices in this book sound much too foreign to me.
Extremely true Natalie. Israel is a place where all of my Jewish friends have gone for vacation during the past 8 years. In comparison to the state of Afghanistan, Israel is actually much more different which did make me think about why the children in Israel were being extremely opinionated about how terrible they have it in their country. One can go into a political view and present evidence that suggests otherwise but this isn't a political science class, so on Ellis' behalf, perhaps she was trying to bring out the similarities (fear of one another) between the two different countries and try to make a point that they are similar in their ways of thinking. Funny thing, if you actually take out the heading of where they're from and censor which country they feel uncomfortable with, they are the same child all together that have been raised to criticize one another. Ellis could have very well chosen her questions to reflect this and only this which doesn't make the book very attractive either, and I'm sure there are children who feel very differently in both countries about the situation. Using my friends as a source of evidence, the Israeli children don't seem very credible in the story's unless if Ellis was just probing for that kind of answer.
Dangit!...that was Mike K btw not stefanos...i really need to change that.
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